Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT
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The coming cashless dystopia?
Tapping with your phone, using chip and pin, paying online — it all seems so much easier than notes and coins. But nothing pushed by big tech and the financial industry giants is in our favour, argues JOHN GREEN
From 35,000 troops in Talisman Sabre war games to HMS Spey provocations in the Taiwan Strait, Labour continues Tory militarisation — all while claiming to uphold ‘one China’ diplomatic agreements from 1972, reports KENNY COYLE
White racist rioting has many an infamous precedent in Britain, writes DAVID HORSLEY
The SNP might dissemble over the meaning of ‘nationalism,’ but it can’t disguise the fact that it is no left-wing party, says ELAINE SMITH
Castro became one of the first leaders to denounce Israeli genocide against Palestinians at the UN, comparing zionist persecution to Nazi crimes while Cuba trained PLO cadres and awarded Arafat state honours, writes PABLO MERIGUET
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
MANY readers will already have experienced situations where they are unable to pay for things in cash and have to use a valid credit or debit card. Car parking is only one such transaction where having a card is almost obligatory these days, most supermarkets are changing their checkouts to cashless machines — and the new Amazon grocery shops don’t take cash at all. Many of us are now mostly shopping online and credit and debit cards are obligatory.
Even our relationship with government agencies and local authorities is now almost impossible without access to a computer and a credit card. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? If you’ve got a good credit rating and bank account, you may prefer the idea of paying by card — it’s simple and painless and you don’t have to carry a wad of cash and small change in your pocket.
We see headlines in the press, like “Customers move towards digital payments” and “Banks shutting down ATMs as people move towards digital payments” — as if everyone is just collectively acting like this, and the big institutions are just following our lead.
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